


Ages Past

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Everyone else is in Heaven, M/M, Past Character Death, Reincarnated!Grantaire, car crash, ghost!Enjolras, happy ending I promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 22:25:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2325383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"His hair is long and golden, and Grantaire thinks it’d glow if it wasn’t for the dust and what looked like dried blood caked in it.  His jacket is red, matching the color of the eight blood-stained bullet holes in his shirt. He wears a look of horrible sadness, and Grantaire wants to wipe it off his face, thinking he’d be so much prettier without it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ages Past

**Author's Note:**

> there is sadness in here, please beware of that ok?

“Hey!” Grantaire shouts to Marie acrossed the cafe. “We’re out of coffee filters, can you run up to the storeroom and grab some?”

“Yeah sure!” Marie says as she wipes down a table. “Anything else?”

Grantaire thinks as he flips the sign on the door from ‘open’ to ‘closed’ “I don’t think so.” He says.

“Okay. I’ll be right back, then.” She grabs a flashlight and disappears up the stairs to the attic that serves as a storage room. It’s always dark up there, and Grantaire has tried to install a light, but is always unable to for some reason. He goes back to work.

A moment later, Marie reappears, empty-handed but white as a sheet, shaking like a leaf. “Marie what happened? Are you okay?” Grantaire asks, his forehead creasing in concern.

“I-” Marie’s voice comes out faint and quivering, and she has to try again. “I think the building’s haunted.” She says seriously. Grantaire tries to keep a straight face but doesn’t do a very good job. “Don’t laugh at me, I’m serious!” Marie complains. “Go see for yourself!” She says and points to the stairway.

Grantaire looks at her skeptically, which is something he is strangely good at. She looks back at him, expectant in an equal measure. He finally sighs and relents. “Alright fine, I’m going, I’m going.” Marie is the only person who has ever been able to beat, or even bear his skepticism, although he’s always had a strange sensation of there having been someone else, at one point.

He walks up the staircase and into the darkened room. There are boards over the windows, but Grantaire’s never bothered to ask why. “Hello?” He calls. “Anybody there?” He rolls his eyes and smiles to himself. “Come out, come out wherever you are!”

When he walks back down the stairs, Marie is standing in the doorway. “Well?” She asks immediately.

“Nothing.” Grantaire says. “What did you even see anyway?”

“It was a ghost.” She says and Grantaire rolls his eyes. “He was wearing like, really old-fashioned clothes, and he was blonde, I almost thought he was a woman at first. And his face,” She shudders.

“What like, creepy joker grin awful?” Grantaire asks, trying to lighten the mood slightly.

Marie punches him in the arm softly, smiling a little. “No, jackass. He looked sad, but almost hopeful? Like he missed someone but he knew he was going to see them soon?”

Grantaire hums. “I think you’ve been watching too many movies, my friend.”

Marie laughs. “Maybe. I’m gonna go home, it’s late and I have class early tomorrow.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I can grab the filters before I leave.” Marie looks at him worriedly. “I’ll be fine. Even if ghosts were real, they couldn’t hurt anyone, they’d phase right through them!”

Marie seems to think about this for a moment. “True. Alright, I gotta go now or I’ll miss the bus and I don’t want to have to walk.”

“I can drive you if you-”

Marie interrupts him, “Coffee filters, remember? Relax, I’ll be fine.”

“Alright, just be careful okay?”

Marie is already walking out the door.

Grantaire sighs and returns to wiping down the tables and rearranging the chairs. Maybe he’ll ask her to call in sick tomorrow, she’s been working too hard. They both have.

Grantaire’s alarm goes off, signalling that it’s 11:30 and time to close up. He does so in a mechanical practiced way that shows he’s spent many years doing it. He checks his pockets for his keys and finds that he left them in his apartment. Sighing, he walks around the back of the building and climbs the frankly very unstable stairs up to his third floor apartment window, which he leaves open in case of this very situation which happens many times a month. Marie chides him leaving the window open, “someone could break in” she says. What they would take Grantaire has no idea, seeing as all he keeps in his apartment is some cheap furniture he got off a friend and some of his own shit art.

He pushes open the window and climbs through and then closes it quickly. He leaves his jacket on the desk and kicks off his shoes, and then walks into the kitchen. Grantaire opens the fridge. He considers the old beer in the back of the fridge but instead he grabs a carton of lo mein from the night before and sticks it in the microwave. While he waits for the microwave to go off, he putters around the kitchen putting plates in the sink and papers in the trash while humming a song that he doesn’t remember the words to any longer. The microwave goes off and he puts the lo mein on a plate and plants himself on the couch, picking up a magazine that’s pages are all bent and ripped. He flips through it, laughing at how obsessed the media is with celebrities lives and making mental notes to look things up.

He finishes his dinner and puts his plate in the sink. He’s about to go find his sketchbook when he gets a strange sensation of not being alone. Turning around, Grantaire is faced with a man, who he instantaneously recognizes as what he has mentally dubbed ‘Marie’s Ghost.’

Her description of him barely touches the surface. She’s right about the effeminate look to him, feminine yet not enough to be mistaken for a woman. His hair is long and golden, and Grantaire thinks it’d glow if it wasn’t for the dust and what looked like dried blood caked in it. His jacket is red, matching the color of the eight blood-stained bullet holes in his shirt. He wears a look of horrible sadness, and Grantaire wants to wipe it off his face, thinking he’d be so much prettier without it.

“Apollo.” Grantaire says and he doesn’t know where it came from but it’s familiar, it’s so familiar and the man smiles and Grantaire can’t think, can’t move, he can’t breathe.

When the man smiles, he somehow looks even more desolate, and he nods his head once in acknowledgement and disappears.

Grantaire’s legs are quivering so much he feels like he might keel over any moment. His teeth are chattering, his head is pounding and he’s seriously thinking about having that beer now.

He draws his phone from his pocket slowly, in an effort not to drop it for how much his hands were shaking. He dials in Marie’s number. “Can you take my shift tomorrow? Yeah, I’m not feeling too great. Thanks, I owe you one.” He hangs up and drops the phone on the counter. Rubbing his hands down his face, he sighs unsteadily. “I need to sleep.”

Sleeping, as it turns out, doesn’t help at all. Because when you sleep, most people have dreams, and unfortunately, Grantaire happens to be one of those people. He dreams about Apollo, which should surprise him but it doesn’t really. It feels like he’s been dreaming about him forever. It does surprise him that he himself is also in the dream. Dream is actually a slightly inaccurate description, it’s more like a series of scenes, flashes and images and sensations that feel like memories. Screaming, the sound of gunshots, words in a language he no longer understands, the press of a hand, an unfinished smile and then he’s shooting up like a bolt in his bed, shaking and sweating and crying, he realises as he wipes tears from his cheeks.

He turns to look at the alarm clock and groans when the numbers glowing back at him read 2:08 AM. He pushes himself out of bed, deciding there’s no way he’s going to be able to get back to sleep.

He walks into the living room and flops down on the couch. He reaches for the remote control and turns the TV to a random channel. He hears footsteps but thinks nothing of them, believing it to just be the TV. And then the man sits down next to his feet on the couch.

It takes all Grantaire’s willpower not to jump off the couch and run, or drink himself into oblivion, or both because he must be going crazy. “Um.” He says. The man turns towards him and his mouth goes dry because he’s so familiar, and he had dreams about him, and he can’t understand why he’s so familiar but he pushes onwards anyway and says: “Hello.”

The man tries to speak but looks confused, like it’s been so long since he’s held a conversation that he doesn’t remember how to, and that’s not right, Grantaire thinks. Apollo was always talking, arguing, rallying, ordering. And he has no idea, none at all where those thoughts are coming from but they feel right, so he doesn’t think on it any longer. And the ghost, because that’s what he is, a ghost, seems to have figured out what to say now. “Hello, Grantaire.” His voice is raspy and it creaks like old furniture but it’s deep and distinct like you wouldn’t expect from someone who looks like him.

“I don’t know your name. Or remember your name? I feel like I should remember it. I’m sorry.”

The man’s face crumples and _oh no_ , Grantaire thinks, _he’s going to cry_ “Oh, please don’t cry Apollo! Please, I couldn’t bear it if you cried. He wants to put his hand on his shoulder, pat his hand, wrap his arms around him and never ever let him go but he can’t and it hurts, god it hurts.

“I’m Enjolras.” The man says and he looks hurt and Grantaire needs to touch him, he needs to feel the press of his hand on his just one more time. “Grantaire, I need to know how much you remember about-” He stops, and sucks in a rattley breath, and then he finishes “about me, and about back then.”

“Um.” And that’s about as eloquent as Grantaire can be right now but he swallows and tries again. “I remember dying.” And Enjolras gasps quietly, as if trying to cover it up. “And I remember you, holding my hand and you didn’t get to finish smiling and did you know that was the first time you’d ever smiled at me? And I remember being chosen to come back, and thinking no this isn’t how it’s supposed to go, I’m supposed to stay here with him. But I guess things don’t always go our way, yeah?”

There were tears in Enjolras’ eyes and Grantaire knows there’s nothing he can do to stop him crying, or even to comfort him. He longs to run his hands through his hair and whisper into his shoulder that it’ll be alright but he couldn’t. “I’m sorry.” He says quietly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I am so sorry,” repeating this mantra of apologies to Enjolras, hoping that it’ll do something to comfort him.

When he’s finally calmed down, Grantaire asks him “Will you stay here?” and Enjolras nods fervently. Grantaire smiles. “Thank you.”

Enjolras is with him every waking hour, and roams around the apartment while he sleeps. Now that he remembers how to talk, he won’t shut up, and constantly chatters on in a way that Grantaire never thought possible.

They still argue, but not severely, and Grantaire hesitates to even call them arguments, and Enjolras seems to be intent on calling them debates, which Grantaire agrees to quickly.

Enjolras is content, not overjoyed, perhaps, because he can’t even touch Grantaire and vice versa, but it’s wonderful to even see him, so, he thinks, that beggars can’t be choosers.

They’re happy together, although it obviously isn’t the most conventional relationship. And then things go wrong.

It’s mid-December and snow is falling heavily, so heavily that you can barely see the road. Enjolras argues that Grantaire shouldn’t go out, but he is adamant about going to see Marie in the hospital. Enjolras has said it’s not even his kid but Grantaire argues and says that he’s her best friend and he wants to be there to support her.

The road is slippery, and Grantaire is beginning to regret his decision and contemplating finding a way to turn back. The car comes out of nowhere. It slides too quickly into his peripheral vision to even register it clearly before it slams into his own car and he slides off the road into a ravine and then everything is becoming dimmer and dimmer until everything goes dark.

He wakes up, and he’s in his apartment again. Wondering if it was all a dream, he goes to pick up a magazine. His hand goes right through the magazine, and the table it sits on.

“Grantaire?” Enjolras calls from what’s probably Grantaire’s bedroom. “Are you okay, why are you home so early?” He walks into the room and looks at Grantaire face contorting into shocked horror. “No.” He says in a small voice. “No, no no no no.” In three long strides he stands directly in front of him and cups his face in his hands and then it hits Grantaire, and he’s crying suddenly and he doesn’t know how to stop, can’t stop. He buries his face in Enjolras’ chest and lets out cries until they become dry heaving sobs and Enjolras wraps his arms around him and murmurs into his hair that it’ll all be fine and then a light is blinding them both, and they hear shouting, before people, so many familiar people come running towards them. Courfeyrac drags Combeferre by the sleeve of his shirt, wrapping Enjolras in a hug together, and pulling Grantaire in too. A tall, broad, warm presence is felt and there is a yell of joy before an exasperated Feuilly is grabbed forcefully into the group by an excited Bahorel, Joly and Bossuet trailing quickly behind them. Jehan wanders closely to them, before being yanked into the fray by someone who was probably Joly but could be Enjolras himself.

Grantaire looks at Enjolras and Enjolras looks at Grantaire, a sort of unspoken message passing between them. They link hands, with each other and all of their friends, and they walk into the light.

**Author's Note:**

> please like/bookmark if you like and tell me what you thought too!!


End file.
